CHARLESTON, W.Va. — There are 19 cases of HIV in Kanawha County currently, up one from the end of November.
Those numbers were reported by Dr. Sherri Young, the Chief Health Officer for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department during the third meeting of the Kanawha-Charleston HIV Task Force on Wednesday.
Young told MetroNews that the one added is not from IV drug abuse, keeping the number of HIV cases from IV abusers at eight. In 2018, the number of HIV cases in the county was 17 with six for IV drug abusers. The average for Kanawha County in recent years has been 14 HIV cases.
“We don’t want to let our guard down, we know that it is an increase,” Young said of the slight uptick. “We don’t want it to keep increasing by two or three every year because it shows there is still work to do. This does appear to be, at least for now, contained because we are finding everybody where they need to be.”
Young applauded the work of the task force, saying it has helped contain those HIV numbers. The task force has met every month since forming in October with the goal of increasing capacity for HIV testing and linkage to care in Kanawha County.
Joining Young on Wednesday included representatives from the Bureau of Public Health in the Division of HIV, STD and Hepatitis, partners from West Virginia Health Right, officials from Charleston Area Medical Center and the Ryan White program, along with Thomas Health, first responders, and City of Charleston and Kanawha County officials.
Young, who serves as the chair of the task force, said the group is doing what we set out to accomplished.
“We are reaching different parts of the county. We are not siloed in the fact that we are able to work together to find these people to get them into care. There has been a lot of processes improved as far as identifying these people with HIV or may be at risk but also getting them into the care that they need.”
The next meeting for the task force will be after the 2020 regular legislative session gets underway but the group did discuss a few priorities for under the dome.
Those include anything to maintain and push for more funding for HIV testing, looking at a statewide regulation on grease traps, maintaining immunization laws, and looking at the Tobacco 21 campaign which aims to set the minimum age to 21 to buy and use tobacco products.